Discussions Official Disney/EU discussion thread.

Yeah, I thought so too.

If they did, I imagine it'd be because a story they wanted to put out on film would conflict with the prequel trilogy (which is probably the reason they throughout the other EU)

 

I think all bets are off.

 

Well certainly they wouldn't touch the original trilogy, that'd be marketing suicide.

 

It might take a decade or two, but the OT is going to be remade some day...

 

Of this I have no doubt. Han Solo will be a big green alien, Leia will be the one orphaned on Tatooine and will have to rescue Prince Luke. Vader won't be their father, instead it will have been Obi-Wan (who abandoned them in order to try to keep them safe from the Empire) the list of changes will be long and amusing.

 

long and annoying as hell more like

 

Yes it would.

 

Or (worse? Maybe?) it'll be like the Psycho remake, and be shot-for-shot...but now in a new format: HFR 3D with Smello-Vision!
"What a wonderful smell you've discovered!" {please scratch number 5, eau de Trash Compactor}

 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...

I'm saying that, but I prefer the OT to PT.

Still...

 

Hi y'all, new here
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So it's official, save the 6 movies, the Clone Wars film and TV show, each and every SW story ever told so far in books, comics and TV films/cartoons is now non-canon, bearing the label "Star Wars Legend" for any future rerelease.
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This won't be of any importance for most people. This is a hard pill to swallow for hardcore SW fans who've been inversting a fortune in those books and comics (hundreds of them since 1977). This is kind of a good news/bad news situation for casual SW fans like me.
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Obviously the Expended Universe, as it's called, was full of junk alongside a few great stories. I myself, after having read a certain amount of novels and comics, gave up on the whole thing a long while ago, because no so much was worth my time and money. Nonetheless, I have very fond memories of some novels that made my SW experience bigger and better.
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When Lucasfilm and Disney announced a few weeks back that a new team had been assigned to decide what would remain canon and what wouldn't, this seemed a good opportunity to do some clean-up and obviously at least everything that had happened after ROTJ had to be wiped out to make room for Episode VII.
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Still, it was a bit of a shock when they finally announced that they wiped out EVERYTHING. Instead, everything published from now on (including books that were started before the decision was made) will be supervized by a team of continuity experts to make sure they fit the new continuity (i.e. future movies).
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I have to admit I'm quite puzzled. Some stories such as the novels chronicling the youth of Han Solo could perfectly be kept I guess, so did the novels and comics that directly prequelled or sequelled the existing movies. Those gave depth to the canon material without going into total insanity. And despite a few inconsistencies the whole Clone Wars franchise had provided a solid, cohesive corpus of books and comics that for the most part could have been kept.
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But no, all of it is now trash. They'll remain in print but as "Legends" stories.
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Well, OK, so what's my problem? My problem is not so much that all these stories are now non-canon than the fact that all the upcoming books and comics will. They could have done like Star Trek, i.e. only films and TV series are canon and the rest is just for your entertainment, a parallel world of sorts. Fine. But no, they said each and every new book and comic-book will be canon. What makes the next Darth Maul novel, which had been planned for months, better than the books I used to love? What makes it belong to the new canon more than the old Darth Maul novels? Nothing I guess.
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On the other hand what was the logic of this big cleaning up? It was just to make sure the people writing future movies and TV shows could tell whatever story they wanted to without being annoyed by ANY past continuity save the one from the movies and TV shows. OK, makes a lot of sense.
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OK, so while some past books/comics were totally able to fit in the new movies continuity, it was too complicated. This I understand. But what happens if, in say 2022, some movie scripter wants to tell a story for a 200,000 million dollars film and that story contradicts one comic book or novel story from 2015? Are we really expected to believe that plans will be changed in the script of a 200,000M film because it's contradicting a 4 bucks comic or a 8 bucks novel? I don't think so. It won't. They won't let it happen. On the other hand by 2022 the new canon will be overcrowded by dozens and lby 2032 hundreds of new comics and books telling just as many stories, and I fail to see how movie writers will manage to keep checking the "bible" to make sure the story they want to tell won't be contradicted by a single 22 pages comic story from 10 years ago. They won't. And therefore, while keeping tracks of the movies/TV shows continuity will be relatively easy if the people at Lucasfilm do their job, the new EU will soon become a burden as heavy to bear as the old EU, and I bet that it won't take 10 years for Lucasfilm to say "scrap it" and annonce that finally everything outside of the films and TV shows is non-canon because it would otherwise contradict their new 200,000M bucks movie.
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Is it possible that professionals at Lucasfilm haven't thought of this and that I have? Either it ain't or those people are complete amateurs! What's happening is that SW fans are being looked down as milk cows and idiots who may not buy the new books if they're non-canon and just buy them if they believe they're telling the TRUE story.
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So I don't really mind if those books I loved 10 years ago are now non-canon but I don't see why that next book that was in the works for months suddenly would, neither do I see why I should care for it more than for my old books because I know it will be decanonized just as well anyway.
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The only sane approach would have been either to keep the whole EU canon and try to make sense of it with the new movies or, more likely, to decanonize everything that wasn't on screen (big or small).
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Disney's huge mistake wasn't to decanonize the EU. It was to think we're all idiots and pretend the new EU is canon when it's, technically, impossible.

 

it's because there's going to be a story group that guides where things are going, and they're going to be the ones making sure everything lines up. the movie maker has to get his story past them, not the other way around. or that's how it's supposed to work.

 

Yes I understand this logic but when the new hip writer or director gets hired by Disney 10 years from now and has a wonderful, really great idea for a Yoda film happening 200BBY and that idea is contradicted by a 22 pages Marvel comic issue from 2015 or a 5 pages long SW Insider short story from 2019, do you really think they'll tell him "sorry dude you can't tell that story because issue 13 of the "SW: Yoda" comic book contradicts it, so please come up with another idea but hell it's really bad because we could have done an easy billion dollars with that film you have in mind"? They can't. They won't. I mean how long can this last with a dozen books and several dozen comics being published every year? And then why not keep SOME old EU stuff, the principle would have been the same if future film writers are going to be buried under dozens of stories in the end anyway.

+ there's the fact that those new announced novels, even the next SW Insider short story for crying out loud, projects that were obviously started months ago are supposed to fit in. Those stories were not built according to a new bible, the writers don't even know what will be in Episode VII I guess. It's just that those stories happened to be planned for release after the announcement was made but had they been published 3 months ago they would have been the exact same stories but they'd be "Legend". Isn't this ridiculous?

This all smells that a rushed project, an idea someone at the marketing department had without knowing what they were talking about, not the well thought result of a team of experts that would be Lucasfilm's equivalent to what people like Peter Sanderson or Mark Gruenwald were/are when it comes to the Marvel Universe, i.e. dedicated historians and archivists. It's more like a bunch of people tried to look into the EU, realized they were too lazy to try and sort it out by reading hundreds of books and comics and browsing the Holocron and said "OK you know what let's just say none is canon it'll be simpler" and everybody was like "yeah cool you just saved us months of hard work, can we go have a burger now?" and then someone asked "OK but what about the book that's out next month?" and without even having read it they just said "Well if it's published after we make the press release it's canon and that'll do, will you now pass me the joint, please?". It shouldn't be like that. It should be people who know the source material and wonder "OK, what may be a source of problems for future writers? What's too silly to be kept? What can be kept because it doesn't contradict anything and doesn't happen after ROTJ? What's solid ground that future writers may want to build on? How about a TV adaptation of the Han Solo trilogy, could this sell?". Either that or, even more logically, they could have decided that it's possible to keep a solid, cohesive universe if it's limited to movies and TV shows but that they just won't bother telling a director that he can't do his Yoda story because of a Star Wars Insider tale from 10 years ago, whether post 2014 or pre 2014 UE, so everything outside of what's on screen is non-canon, period.

The main issue here is that you have an ensemble of medias submitted to 2 main medias, TV and films, that are about 100 times more profitable than the other medias. For example despite its ton of messy stories and inconsistancies the Marvel Universe works because it's all comics. But when they do a Marvel Cinematic Universe comic book showing thet the Leader has been arrested by SHIELD after the Hulk film, I don't think it won't stand a minute if they want to do a Hulk sequel with the Leader because basically the MCU comics are inferior in economic value to the MCU films and TV shows. They'll make sure nothing contradicts Agents Of SHIELD because millions of people have seen the show, but who cares for a couple of geeks who bought a SHIELD comic book 5 years ago? So basically anything from a SW book or a comic that goes against a good idea for a SW film or TV show just CAN'T be kept canon. No way. I don't believe that, not when there'll be hundreds of cooks and comics.

It's just my opinino, for what it's worth, but I wonder how many time they'll have to reboot the EU because it suddenly conflicted a new film or TV show. SO if they're gonna do this why not just give us a break. How many tabs will Wookipedia have in 20 years?

 

Pablo, and Leland were talking about being on the Story Group during Celebration Europe.

Kathleen Kennedy started the Story Group as soon as she took over. The authors had to keep quiet about their projects, and obviously
they needed group approval. Kiri hart the head of the Story Group was at the script read in London.

Disney will not hire anyone who is not willing to work with the Story Group.

 

OK I'm sorry maybe I got confused with the chronology. I read about 2 months ago that the news was to decide what was canon and what wasn't and what was canon and the announcement seemed to be new back then. So as far as I understand it it wasn't 2 months between the decision to "clean" the canon and the decision to reboot it all. Was the first announcement made much earlier? I see the European convention dates back to July 2013, that's a while ago, was decanonization in the works already at this point?

I'm confused now: Ms. Kennedy took over in October 2012. What was the Story Group's job between that time and the moment when decanonization was announced a few weeks back? I mean what did they do that Leland Chee wasn't doing before that (i.e. avoiding contradictions between EU stories?). Did them somehow work at establishing a new bible or something?

And my question still stands: weren't the next projects, the first ones to be part of the new canon, started long before the decision was made to wipe out the old continuity? If so what makes them more canon than things that were published say, 3 months ago, if not the release date? Are we to discover new SW things in those books that wouldn't have been possible in the old EU continuity?

As I said I'm only a casual SW fan, not an expert like many of you guys here, so I'm genuinely trying to figure it all out. Many thx for your help

 

For the most part, lotusflow3r, I agree with you. They could do another clean sweep in 20 years and not bat Minnie Mouse's eyelash. It disturbs me, too. I have to ask why should I spend my precious $$ on your book when I don't know if it's gonna be good info in five or ten years? They could, very easily, have done a surgical cull. Instead they painted with a broad brush. One that I'm really hating leaving is "Labyrinth of Evil," by James Luceno. That book gave a fantastic backstory to Episode III!

They did have a group that vetted books previously, though. It was Skywalker Ranch. If you wanted to write a book, or if there was a story they wanted to get out there, Skywalker Ranch would be the final say. They contracted authors when there was a story arc. They heard and approved (with changes) stories that authors independently wanted to write. My understanding is that this was the result of the fiasco of "Splinter of a Mind's Eye." There was such confusion by that book coming out right after "Star Wars" (it wasn't "Episode IV" back then) that Skywalker Ranch was put together as the keeper of the canon. They did a pretty damn good job of it, too. Although I (and Han) could have been much happier if they hadn't made a moon fall on poor Chewy on Sernpidal.

 

If the Leader pops up again in the MCU not in SHIELD custody, they'll probably be a comic covering why he isn't in SHIELD custody (or even a throwaway line in the MCU film or TV media that says "he broke out when Garret and Ward with HYRDA released everyone from prison") because it's highly doubtful next time Sterns pops up in the MCU it would not be in the immediate aftermath of "Incredible Hulk" when he was captured in "Fury's Big Week" comic, so there is time for him to be in and out of SHIELD custody. In theory, that's how Star Wars story group could work. If a film or TV series contradicts something, send in the retcon police (either the comic book retcon or novel retcon police or throwaway line).

 

Well, in all good faith I can only hope it'll work. I'm quite impressed at how y'all stay "cool" about this, when I first came to check out what fans were thinking after the announcement I expected a 150 pages long thread lol

 

it's one of those, there's nothing we can do about it but wait and see what happens. there's no real use getting completely steamed about it, so...

my initial response was very much like yours. i was debating refusing to even see the new movies, but the tarkin book has seriously grabbed my curiosity for one, and i am curious about what they're going to do. so i'm willing to give it a chance. if they do a clean sweep again, then i'm pretty much done again. and if they need to, they can do the retcon thing again to make everything work. *shrugs* things were HARDLY perfectly ordered in the EU before, they had to fix any number of things, and i'm willing to live with that again.

 

Mmmh, being the geek I am I've just been reading some stuff from the various timelines offered online (such great jobs!) and learned that there are major continuity issues between the Clone >ars stories from 2002-2008 and the cartoon series and its spin-offs: it seems this has been a huge headache for everyone. I'm wondering, since the Clone Wars cartoon is now Canon does it mean it's not part of the Legends continuity and the problem is solved, with only the 6 films being at the same time in both Canon and Legends? Have this been cleared by the Story Group or any of those continuity researchers or the people at Wookiepedia? Because I was thinking the good news with this is that now we have basically 2 parellel universes (to solve things elegantly the way Marvel does it with every material that's outside of Eath 616 continuity) + of course the numerous Infinities stories, and if no more Legends material is published it means we have a solid corpus telling a full, huge story that goes from early Sith era tales to the Legacy era. Since it seems the only major continuity problems come from the Clone Wars cartoon, excluding it from Legends would solve it all wouldn't it?

 

Problem is, quite a lot of Legends comics and novels use TCW as their starting point.

 

You mean post-2008 comics and novels use TCW cartoon as their starting point, using its chronology instead of the previous Del Rey/Dark Horse chronology? So from 2008 on there r inconsistencies even between books and comics not just between the cartoon and the rest???

 

Not just the chronology - the characters as well. Wild Space and No Prisoners (novels) have Ahsoka. As, I think, does the Clone Wars Gambit duology. And there's The Wrath of Darth Maul, which covers his backstory from childhood to the point Savage Opress finds him. Comics like Darth Maul: Death Sentence, haven't (yet) been added to the "canoniverse" which means (unlike the post-announcement Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir) they're currently part of the Legendsverse.

The Star Wars Illustrated Fact File magazine, in its various articles about the Clone Wars era, reference both events written pre-TCW (Ventress and Anakin duelling on Yavin IV) and events from TCW.

 

Oh lawd! From what I've read on the various Timeline sites both continuities are quite irreconciliable. I wonder whether continuity researchers shouldn't now admit 3 timelines besides the Infinities: Legends, Clone Wars Legends and Canon. Is there a thread or forum where researchers discuss those continuity issues together? I'd be quite interested in following thei debates. thx

 

I believe this is the thread you're looking for:
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...hensive-clone-wars-l-canon-timeline.50010768/

 

Cool, many thx